The President and the Prosecutor

By RICHARD L. BERKE

Published: February 21, 2010

THE DEATH OF AMERICAN VIRTUE

Clinton vs. Starr

By Ken Gormley

Illustrated. 789 pp. Crown Publishers. $35

Is anyone still fixated on the escapades of Linda Tripp and her motives for ratting out Monica Lewinsky? Or on what Lewinsky's high-powered lawyers advised her to do with the semen-stained blue dress? (Don't give it to Goodwill.) Or on whether Vincent Foster, the deputy White House counsel, actually committed suicide? (Yes, he did.)

Even amid the blazing intensity of President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, the political controversy and sexual scandal it grew out of felt at once momentous and trivial -- unbearably so, at times. It was only the second impeachment of a president in American history (Andrew Johnson was the first). Newspapers published keepsake reprints of the report by Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel, as though it had the historical import of the Pentagon Papers. More than one million copies of the report were printed in book form. Yet the entire episode stemmed not from matters of war and peace, but from the question of whether Clinton, when he was governor of Arkansas, had bared himself to a young woman, Paula Corbin Jones, in a Little Rock hotel room in 1991.

In today's world of suicide bombers and a ravaged economy, it all seems not merely frivolous, but ludicrous. And it's especially disconcerting to think that while so many were preoccupied by Clinton's ''distinguishing characteristic,'' Osama bin Laden was most likely preoccupied with attacking the United States.

''The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr,'' by Ken Gormley, recreates it all, from the Clintons' investment in the Whitewater development in rural Arkansas to the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit and Clinton's affair with Lewinsky, culminating in the impeachment trial. This hefty volume, going beyond the sordid details, provides helpful context for the larger story, the fractionalization of American politics that defined the Clinton years.

Gormley, a professor at the Duquesne University School of Law, approaches his subject with scholarly detachment. If anything, he is too detached. He refrains from exploring the motivations of the two central figures, Clinton and Starr, even when their conduct invites scrutiny. He also could have concentrated even more on the broader political theater, much of it driven by the media and particularly by cable television and Web sites like the Drudge Report that gleefully covered the misbehavior of the ''celebrity in chief'' down to every salacious footnote in the Starr report.

Yet the sobriety of ''The Death of American Virtue'' also offers a relief from the familiar overheated chronicles. Unlike some other commentators, Gormley allows for the possibility that even the most rabid-seeming players might have acted out of honorable considerations. Starr, for one, comes across not as a zealous partisan but as the wrong choice to prosecute the case. Despite his impressive r?m?- he had been a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then solicitor general under George H. W. Bush -- he had never run a major criminal investigation. His missteps handed both sides in the case ample cause to distrust him. Yes, he gave running room to a clique of lawyers driven by a deep antipathy toward Bill Clinton. But he also initially opposed subpoenaing the president, invoking the duty ''to be respectful of the presidency.''

Gormley's account gains credibility and freshness for another reason: He interviewed all the crucial participants, some of whom disclosed valuable nuggets. Most surprising, perhaps, is that Susan Webber Wright, the federal judge who oversaw the Jones case, considered finding Clinton in criminal contempt during the Senate trial following his impeachment by the House. Had she done so, it might have ''ended his political career in a nanosecond,'' Gormley writes, giving the Senate all it needed to convict.

This was a rare instance of restraint. Although the author never explicitly makes the point, he has in effect written a case study in excess, as outrage at Clinton's actions prompted people to overreact. Gormley turns up suggestions of possible misconduct on both sides. These include the assertion by Lewis Merletti, the former director of the Secret Service, that the F.B.I. improperly grilled him in an effort to prove that Merletti's agents had tried to cover up Clinton's flings and had even helped facilitate them. And Monica Lewinsky is quoted as saying she believed Clinton lied under oath to a grand jury.

Did the Clinton-Starr entanglement change how we look at politicians or morality? Probably not. Have the subsequent presidents gone out of their way to show off their happy personal lives? Perhaps, but then politicians have long pushed their blissful families front and center. Nor does it seem that the Clinton scandal has made the public either more or less forgiving of John Edwards's trespasses, this season's most titillating political news.

''The Death of American Virtue'' dispenses important lessons. One is that the investigation was a colossal diversion -- not only for the president but also for his aides (despite their insistence then that it was not a distraction). It also eclipsed the administration's genuine accomplishments. No wonder that years later, Clinton's ''eyes flashed with anger'' at the very mention of the independent counsel.

It's not surprising that both Clinton and Starr agreed to be interviewed multiple times for this book. They come off the better for it, especially when admitting to their miscalculations. You don't have to be sympathetic to Clinton to understand how he felt under siege at every turn. You don't have to be a Starr loyalist to see how the Clinton drama blotted his own reputation and his dream of landing on the Supreme Court.

Reflecting on his mistake in acquiescing to the appointment of an independent counsel, Clinton told Gormley, ''I was so na?.'' This is a refrain echoed by others. Wesley Holmes, one of Paula Jones's lawyers, remembering his assumption that her litigation could be handled with dispatch, ruefully told Gormley, ''How na? we were.''

In retrospect, it is tempting to see the Clinton impeachment as having ushered in the feral reality of politics today: the birthers, the Tea Party movement, a Congress where old-fashioned legislative victory has given way to the insatiable appetite for annihilation. But in reality, the case belongs on the continuum that began with the toppling of Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court, continued through the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill fracas and was followed by the contested 2000 election. Indeed, the most consequential result of both Clinton's behavior and the Starr investigation was the election of George W. Bush. Clinton's would-be successor, Vice President Al Gore, was embarrassed to campaign alongside Clinton, especially in the Bible Belt, and ended up losing states where Clinton was still popular.

Shortly before his death in 2007, Henry Hyde, the Illinois congressman who led the impeachment, defended the Republicans' actions as honorable and added, ''I take consolation in comments that George W. Bush would not have been elected if we had not impeached President Clinton.''

There has been no equivalent satisfaction for Monica Lewinsky or for many other participants who still view the events with despair. Even Kenneth Starr,dean at the Pepperdine University School of Law, who this week was named president of Baylor University, regrets that his office wound up as the authority investigating the Lewinsky matter. Recalling his emotions as he watched the impeachment proceedings on television, Starr told Gormley that he asked himself: ''Why did all of this have to happen? Why did we get to where we are? This is all so unnecessary.'' More than a decade later, very few will disagree.

PHOTOS (PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE NEW YORK TIMES (BILL CLINTON) AND DOUG MILLS/ASSOCIATED PRESS (KENNETH W. STARR))